Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Love, Ms. Turner sings, is a second-hand emotion, which to her fans, supporters, and admirers, is arguably a redundant statement, but deep down as the soundtrack album that bears the name What’s Love Got To Do With It resonates through the earphones and the surrounding air, it is emotion of abuse, of mistreatment, survival, and eventual breakthrough that handles the heart, Love plays its part, but love can be blinded by mistreatment, it can wear you down as you attempt to find the pedestal that you were once held so upon, and in which neglect and violence exploited your value to the point where control is the only emotion left standing.
As part of the in-depth re-issues that have been brought to the listener’s attentions once more, the boxset that perhaps might be a surprise is the one that encompassed the film, the biopic of Ms. Turner’s life, her exploitation and heavy mental abuse by her then husband, Ike Turner, the formula of return in which saw her become one of the true queens of rock… What’s Love Got To Do With It, well for Tina Turner, everything.
As with the preceding boxsets, the combination of original album, a collection of rarities, edits and singles, and a tremendous live recording, this time from San Bernardino in California from 1993, make for an epic journey to which the listener will feel every drop of emotion from that period of her enormous and stacked life.
This is not to say it stands equal with Break Every Rule and Foreign Affair, but it is a different beast, it is a work of art that throws back the curtains and allows the measure of sadness to be understood, the melancholy, the triumph of persistence to be celebrated, not an album of anthems, but of solace and peace at its reveal.
It is perhaps to the live set that sells the boxset to the keen follower, from the incredible and the sultry Steamy Windows and Typical Male, the grace of Foreign Affair and Private Dancer, the brilliance of the Mad Max: Beyond The Thunderdome track We Don’t Need Another Hero, the fantastic Proud Mary, Nutbush City Limits, and the inevitability of the album’s title track, Tina Turner pushes herself to the extremes, a hurrah of passion and uncovering a truth of her life for the audience; it is scintillating, it is magnificent, it is a truth.
There should be hope that the remainder of Tina Turner’s catalogue can be visited in such a way over the coming years; it cannot come soon enough…for that is the love she held to the crowd, that is the emotion they felt.
Ian D. Hall